They won Best Gameplay and the Readers’ Choice Award.
Well done Thimbleweed Park! 
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Well deserved. Gameplay is the thing I enjoyed most in the game.
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I really like that they got voted as Readers’ Choice too. It’s one thing for a reputable games website to name what they consider the best games, but to have the players rank them above others must be really gratifying.
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So, which of the three devs are dancing, now? 
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best ::::::: TWP
I’m very pleased by these awards. I think, the Best Gameplay award is also a proof of what a good concept the verbs UI still is. I always wondered why it has been criticised in reviews occasionally.
Most of the more “modern” UIs feel extremely limited to me. I would even call a lot of them “cheap”, as they reduce the amount of work for the developers & voice-actors and might help to reduce the production costs significantly - while they make the game feel more primitive to the player. I grew up with the verbs and I’ve been used to trying to push, pull, open or close an item, and not only to using it. That’s why I fully agree with the following statement:
The real problem was never the amount of freedom provided or the complexity of puzzles, but in how adventure games deliver feedback and communicate with the player.
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I notice this also in my totally unbiased 4yo daughter. I made her play almost all classic adventure games a little bit, and she totally prefers the verb ones. For her it’s quite clear that a door must be opened and closed, not just “used” or even worse, “used with the hand”.
In fact, sometimes she expects even MORE verbs to be available.
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@BigRedButton: I agree with you in every single aspect!
Me too. 
I would love to see the generic “Use” verb to be replaced by other verbs. On the other side, too much verbs aren’t good either. For example “Gateway” had too much verbs for my taste:
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Wow. That’s more an exercise in vocabulary than figuring out how to solve puzzles!
(Which I’m all for, but not in that context.)
Yes and no. 
Gateway is a textadventure. The two columns are only there for your convenience. You can even hide them. AFAIR the left column contained all verbs that the parser understood.
/edit: You can try it out for free on archive.org:
Gateway : Legend Entertainment Company : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive
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I actually liked text parser games (even if as a kid my English wasn’t that good), but the parser has to be really good, otherwise all that freedom gets lost.
But that’s an ongoing discussion in this forum: what is the correct balance between freedom of movement (aka “number of verbs”) and lack of player frustration (aka “number of verbs that are often useful”)?
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As late as 1991 we had a german text adventure called “Projekt Prometheus” which had such a mean parser that when it didn´t understand you it went as far as mocking you:
“Isch nix sähen verb!”
(I hope you got that)
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Reminds me of Space Quest – its amusing (and very sarcastic) quips made up for the insane ruthlessness of the puzzles.
And I also enjoyed the freedom of typing what I wanted. Like swear words. ‘Would you like your mother to hear you say that?’
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That’s hilarious 
I love how he gets more and more jaded as it goes on.
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“Yuk”
“Okay, so I ate the pillow?” 
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Browsing through episode 2. It’s nice to read some text about adventures, nothing in-depth but it’s well written and they put some goofy effort into it. I happily disagree with some of the opinions and conclusions.
In the end it’s TWP when it comes to a classic point&click adventure and Gorogoa when it’s about a ‘non-traditional’ experience, the rest is about having fun and being involved.
With their emphasis on puzzles, I wonder why there is no category for the best puzzles design/chain in an adventure (gameplay != puzzles).
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Good point – that would make a good category.
It’s interesting to see that TWP is at least once named in every category:
- Best Setting Readers’ Choice
- “Runners Up” in Best Animation
- “Runners Up” in Best Music (Second place!)
- Readers’ Choice Best Acting (Voice or Live Action)
- Readers’ Choice Best Sound Effects
TWP seems to be very popular… 
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